Welcome to Earth, Population: 7 Billion

This month, the global population will surpass 7 billion people, for the first time in history. Predictably, this milestone has sparked a discussion of overpopulation and sustainability. Pessimists are quick to point to the historical trend. Two thousand years ago, the global population was a mere 200 million people. Even by 1900, there were only 1.6 billion of us. But during the 20^th century, population growth exploded as modern medicine dramatically increased life expectancies all across the world. Even people in the shortest-lived countries today (Afghanistan and Zimbabwe) live longer than those in the longest-lived countries did in 1800 (United Kingdom and Netherlands).

The unfortunate side effect of that amazing record of progress has been an ever-increasing population, consuming more and more resources from our planet. Many have questioned how long this can continue. As early as 1798, Thomas Malthus argued that growth in population was outstripping growth in the food supply, and this would inevitably result in widespread famine. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which predicted that overpopulation would soon cause mass starvation, destroy the environment, and lead to widespread war.

So far these predictions have failed to materialize, and it is unlikely that they ever will. Concerns of global overpopulation are overblown. There is plenty of room for everyone; we could fit the entire world’s population into the state of Texas, and the population density would be no greater than New York City. On the question of food security, the Malthusian predictions have always failed to take into account technological development. When Malthus made his original prediction, he completely overlooked the Industrial Revolution that was beginning to unfold around him, making the production of food much more efficient. When Ehrlich did the same, he overlooked both the Green Revolution that increased the production of food threefold, and the invention of new birth control technologies which reduced the rate of growth in the population.

In fact, population growth peaked in 1968, just as The Population Bomb was hitting bookshelves. Although it has not yet stabilized, the rate of growth continues to decline. Some parts of the world are already losing people; the fertility rates in Europe, Russia, and East Asia are well below the replacement rate. The United Nations projects that the global population will plateau by the end of this century, between 10 and 15 billion people.

Even the upper end of the UN’s projection is not unsustainable; if we have 15 billion people by the end of this century, we will easily be able to feed them all, with plenty of food to spare. The population doomsayers will continue to be wrong for the same reason that Malthus and Ehrlich were wrong: they ignore technological developments that allow the production of much more food. The coming Genomic Revolution will play a huge role in this process. Not only will it soon be possible to genetically engineer crops that produce a much higher yield in a given amount of space, it will also be possible to breed crops that can grow in much harsher climates than is currently possible, allowing for the widespread production of crops in parts of the world that were previously considered off-limits. The drought-ravaged Sahel Zone of Africa could one day be a breadbasket. Cold climates like Canada and Russia may one day be able to grow coffee.

Additionally, the development of in vitro meat production will soon mean that it is no longer necessary to raise large herds of livestock when meat can be more efficiently grown in a laboratory. This will free up a huge amount of the earth’s farmland and fresh water, which would otherwise be required to feed the animals. These technological developments – as well as others which may not even be anticipated yet – will undoubtedly allow us to continue feeding our growing global society.

Although global overpopulation is not a problem, the problems of specific regions of the world should not be minimized. South Asia is the hardest hit by overpopulation. India has 1.2 billion people crammed into an area one-third the size of the United States. Bangladesh has 150 million (half the population of the US) packed in an area smaller than Florida. In both of these cases, the vast majority of people live in crushing poverty, with some of the highest rates of malnourishment anywhere in the world. But even here, there is some good news. Both India and Bangladesh have taken steps to get their fertility rates under control, and now their fertility rates are only slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. The era of rapid population growth is drawing to a close for South Asia, although it will still take several decades before it levels off completely.

Many Sub-Saharan African countries have a demographic problem as well, although the nature of the problem is different from South Asia’s problem. With a few exceptions, Africa is not particularly densely populated. Some UN officials and developmental economists have even gone so far as to argue that many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are underpopulated. I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration for a region of the world that cannot currently feed itself, but there is no denying that Africa’s population is nowhere nearly as densely populated as South Asia. India alone has more people than the entire African continent. Africa’s demographic problem is the rapid rate of growth in its population. Unlike India and Bangladesh, which have finally gotten their growth rates under control, many African nations still have fertility rates as shockingly high as 4 or more children per woman. In the case of Niger, the fastest-growing country in the world, women have 7.6 children on average. In other words, the problem facing many Sub-Saharan African nations is that their population is growing faster than their ability to provide for their people.

Can Africa’s demographic problem be solved? Of course. High fertility rates are closely linked to poverty. Families tend to have more children in societies where the opportunity cost of having kids is low, where children can assist with subsistence farming, and where infant mortality rates are high enough that having extra children provides a hedge against the tragic risk that some of them will not survive to adulthood. As Sub-Saharan African countries continue to develop their economies, these underlying problems will fade away just as they did in South Asia and Latin America, and fertility rates will drop. This issue has been widely studied by developmental economists, who have concluded that the best ways to reduce fertility rates are to ensure access to cheap birth control, improve education (especially for girls), and improve health care and nutrition for infants. Many African nations are making tremendous progress toward these goals, and are already seeing the dividends in reduced fertility rates.

So when our global population officially hits the 7 billion mark this week, remember to take the doomsayers with a grain of salt. Our planet is not overpopulated. At the present time, it is a localized problem for only a couple regions of the globe, and soon it will not be a problem at all. Our economic and technological development will see to that. There is plenty of room on our pale blue dot for more people.

How to Eradicate Malaria

On April 25, 2011, the United Nations observed World Malaria Day by setting an ambitious goal: zero malaria deaths by 2015. Few diseases have contributed more to the misery of mankind than malaria has. At its apex in the 19^th century, malaria was responsible for over half of all deaths in some of the hardest hit nations like India, and was endemic to temperate and tropical zones alike. Over the last 150 years, dramatic progress has been made. Malaria has been completely vanquished in the United States and Europe, and sharply reduced in Latin America and South Asia. But Sub-Saharan Africa remains a problem, as it tragically does for many infectious diseases. Today, malaria still kills nearly a million people per year. It is responsible for 20% of all child fatalities in Africa, making it the second-biggest killer in Africa behind HIV/AIDS. Even these high figures probably underestimate malaria’s true consequences, because one of the symptoms of malaria is to weaken the immune system and increase the viral load of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The disease also makes it difficult for nations to escape poverty; developmental economists John Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs estimate that economic growth is reduced by 1.3% per year in countries with widespread malaria.

Why has malaria remained so troublesome in Africa, even while declining elsewhere? Malaria has always been a disease of poverty. In impoverished countries, many makeshift homes do not have screens, doors, or windows to keep mosquitoes out. Additionally, poor people are often unable to afford malaria treatment, which can cost the equivalent of several months of income in some African nations. If it is left untreated, malaria does not simply run its course and disappear from the body like many diseases do. Instead, it goes into dormancy and can strike again months later. Malaria can become a chronic, lifelong problem for some of its victims who do not have access to treatment. In societies in which a large fraction of the population carries malaria (even if it is dormant), mosquitoes are more likely to acquire the disease each time they bite, and therefore more likely to transmit the affliction to new victims.

In spite of the depressing facts surrounding malaria, there is good reason to believe that malaria can be eradicated in the near future. The UN’s goal is probably overly ambitious, but perhaps only by a few years. A number of trends are converging to make it possible to eliminate the disease. The use of mosquito bed nets has become much more common in many African nations. In Rwanda, 56% of young children now sleep under a bed net, compared to just 4% a decade ago. In Kenya, 46% do so, up from just 3% a decade ago. The mosquitoes which carry malaria tend to be nocturnal and prefer to bite indoors, which is why insecticide-coated bed nets are so effective. Those who use bed nets are only half as likely to get malaria as those who do not. It is likely that within the next couple years, many African nations will have enough bed nets to cover their entire at-risk population.

In 2007, the World Health Organization announced its intentions to resume spraying DDT in malaria-endemic countries. Once the scourge of environmentalists, the chemical was banned in the late 1960s. However, it is still the most potent known insecticide. Many scientists now believe that DDT’s harmful effects may have been overstated, and in any case, eradicating malaria is a higher priority. The spraying of DDT to fight malaria is now supported by many prominent green groups, including the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense.

The cost of treating malaria victims is quickly dropping, offering hope that soon medication will be affordable to people in Sub-Saharan Africa. An initiative by European governments, called the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria, aims to reduce the cost of treatment through a combination of concessions and price reductions from pharmaceutical companies, subsidies from European governments, and donations from the private sector to reduce the cost of antimalarial medication to just 5 cents. The effort is already paying off; production of antimalarial medicine has risen from 5 million doses in 2004 to 160 million doses in 2009. Curing people quickly helps the victim and society alike; if people are quickly treated, mosquitoes will be less likely to acquire the malaria parasite each time they bite, and therefore less likely to transmit the disease to others.

Additionally, the search may finally be drawing to a close for the elusive malaria vaccine. In 2009 and 2010, scientists tested a vaccine among several hundred children in Mali. It proved to be effective at preventing malaria for at least one year, although additional tests will need to be conducted before the vaccine can be manufactured for public use.

The widespread use of bed nets, the resumption of DDT spraying, the increasing availability of treatment for victims, and the emergence of a possible vaccine are all coming together simultaneously to make it possible to rid the world of malaria once and for all.

Although the overall prevalence of malaria remains high, these figures mask an important insight: efforts to eradicate malaria are subject to a positive feedback loop. Once the number of infected people (or infected mosquitoes) drops below a certain threshold, it will be more difficult for additional people to become infected, which will reduce the number of infected people and infected mosquitoes even more. This will cause the malaria parasite population to crash, and can occur very quickly. The history of malaria in the United States is a good example of this. In the 1940s, malaria was still common in much of the southern United States, especially in the Mississippi Valley. In 1946, the Center for Disease Control was established with the explicit goal of eradicating malaria. A mere five years later, the disease was gone.

Will the World Health Organization be able to replicate this achievement in Africa, and meet the UN's goal of zero malaria deaths by 2015? I think that's a few years too optimistic. But due to the rapid reduction in malaria and the positive feedback loop which will aid eradication efforts, it isn't implausible. In 2005, the World Health Organization estimated that there were 350-500 million cases of malaria, but just a year later the number of cases had fallen to 247 million. By 2009, there were only 82 million cases. Such a rapid dropoff indicates that malaria is indeed in terminal decline. By the end of this decade, malaria can be rare or extinct, rather than the scourge that it is today.

PREDICTIONS:

By 2020 - There are fewer than 5 million cases of malaria annually, and fewer than 15,000 deaths.

Giving Thanks

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” – Martin Luther King

With the constant barrage of stories in the media about war, recession, terrorism, swine flu, natural disasters, and various other tragedies, one could easily conclude that the world is a horrifying place. But instead of looking at the latest headlines, we should instead contemplate the broad trends of history. The world is a far better place to live today than it ever has been before, and all indications are that the quality of life will continue to improve. This is not just Panglossian optimism; the world is empirically a better place to live by almost any metric one chooses, compared to almost any other historical era one chooses. The arc of human development is long, but it bends towards a better quality of life. And for that, we should be thankful.

For most of human history, life was “nasty, brutish, and short” as Thomas Hobbes described it. The average life expectancy in most major civilizations – including ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval Britain – hovered around 30 years. And these were among the leading civilizations of their era. Today, even the least developed countries on earth typically have life expectancies far higher than that. The advent of the Germ Theory of Disease has revolutionized the way we think about infectious diseases, and has increased the global life expectancy to 69 years. In many developed countries, life expectancy at birth exceeds 80 years.

Education is now ubiquitous in a way that it never has been before in human history. Prior to the middle of the 19^th century, universal education was a completely unknown concept. Education was the province of the elite, designed solely to teach young people how to be the future leaders of the world. Although the American education system is rightly the target of much criticism today, we should not lose sight of the fact that it is a crowning achievement of our history. Universal education has enabled people from all walks of life to apply their talents to make the world a better place in a way that would not have been possible otherwise. Chris Anderson, the curator of TED Talks, proposes this thought experiment: “Pick your favorite scientist, mathematician, or cultural hero. Now imagine that instead of being born when and where they were, they had instead been born with the same abilities in a typical poverty-stricken village in, say, the France of 1200 or the Ethiopia of 1980. Would they have made the same contribution they did make? Of course not.” The ubiquity of education in our society is something for which we should be truly thankful, since it has allowed many more people to solve societal problems than were previously able to do so.

But even many of those who readily acknowledge that life today is much better than in the distant past may wonder if we have run out of steam in recent decades. Stories about the decline of Western civilization are not hard to find in the media, nor are dire warnings about how abrupt climate change could cause widespread famines and wars. If only we could return to the good old days, they wish. But the fact is that the world is much better now than in recent decades as well. Although many people might like to turn back the clock to 2007, before the recession, in the grand scheme of things the recession will be a small blip on the radar screen. If you turn the clock back much farther than just a few years, it becomes obvious that the world is a much better place today than in the past. Over a billion people have been lifted out of grinding poverty in China and India in the last 20 years. The World Wide Web – a strong contender for the single greatest invention of mankind – is less than 20 years old. In the United States, women and minorities have had equal rights for less than 50 years. The Cold War no longer enslaves half the world, and no longer carries the credible threat of a nuclear apocalypse. The overall number of humans per capita killed in warfare is at its lowest level since at least World War II, and possibly all of human history. The “good old days” were never that good. The quality of life today is staggeringly better than even the recent past.

But the most important thing for which we should be thankful is the hope for an even better future. The 20^th century was by far the most disruptive century since the dawn of civilization, and there is no reason the 21^st century can’t be just as important for radically altering the way humans live. Some of the transformative technologies that are now on the horizon include self-driving vehicles, stem cell therapy, lab-grown meat, ubiquitous computing, genomics, 3D printing, solar energy, and mature nanotechnology. These all offer the potential to dramatically improve our quality of life for the better, just as sanitation and education did in the 19^th century, and as plumbing and electricity did in the 20^th.

Let us give thanks for the fact that we live in the best epoch of human history – relative to both the distant past and the recent past. Furthermore, let us be grateful that the technological revolution of the last 150 years shows no signs of slowing down, and will continue to unlock the true potential of human beings by freeing us from menial tasks and unpleasant maladies. We live in interesting times. Let’s treat that as a blessing, not a curse.

The Future of Energy: Solar Power Is Coming

The amount of energy the earth receives from the sun each year is more than 10,000 times the total energy needs of all humans on earth. We cannot effectively harness even such a paltry fraction of the sun’s energy yet. In 2008, less than 0.02% of the global energy supply came from solar energy. In most parts of the world, solar energy is simply too expensive. Carbon-based energy such as oil and coal still provide a cheaper alternative, even while harming our environment. Solar energy currently costs about 38 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with only 5 cents per kWh for oil and less than 1 cent per kWh for coal. Government taxes and subsidies typically reduce this cost disparity slightly, but not enough to make solar energy viable for most people.

Fortunately, this will soon change. Photovoltaic solar cells are typically made of silicon: the same material in computer chips. Engineers cannot shrink the solar panels in the same way that they can shrink transistors, because solar panels need to have a large surface area to absorb as much sunlight as possible. However, they can make the panels themselves more efficient and shrink the thickness of the panels. As a result, solar energy appears to be on a Moore’s Law-like trajectory of its own. Approximately every 18 months, the total solar capacity doubles and the cost falls by 20%. Up until now, this hasn’t been noticeable because it is such a small portion of our overall energy supply. Doubling a small number is still a small number.

However, if this trend continues, solar energy will be able to supply virtually 100% of the earth’s energy needs by 2035. Some observers are even more optimistic, predicting that solar energy will cost about the same as carbon-based energy by 2015. They theorize that after 2015, the capacity of solar energy could increase much more quickly, as consumer demand for solar energy makes it very lucrative and the industry explodes. Other observers are more skeptical; some question whether solar energy is really on Moore’s Law-like pattern of exponential growth at all, suggesting that this recent trend could be caused by other factors.

I think it’s quite clear that solar power will continue to grow at an exponential rate, since manufacturing solar panels requires many of the same techniques that drive the reduction in cost of computer chips. But I wouldn’t count on the industry suddenly exploding in popularity as soon as solar energy becomes slightly cheaper than oil and coal. It’s important to remember that solar energy is not a commodity like oil that can be traded globally. The costs will be much lower in deserts and other sunny areas. By the end of this decade, we may see the American Southwest and Southern Europe starting to switch to solar power, while other regions lag behind, using oil and coal for much longer.

Moving away from fossil fuels will be the single most important step we can take to stop making climate change worse (although much of the damage will already be done, and will continue to accumulate for decades after the switch). An international economy that was not reliant on oil would be much more stable for global security. Many of the biggest potential threats to international stability come from oil-rich regimes, where money from oil exports often funds extremist groups or large militaries that destabilize the region. Furthermore, solar energy prices would be much more predictable than oil. Unlike oil, there would be no maximum amount of energy available; new solar panels could always be added and older panels could be improved, ensuring that the price continued to drop. They would drop at a roughly consistent rate, rather than fluctuating wildly from one year to the next as oil does. Eventually, the energy cost in nearly all products will be virtually eliminated, as solar energy becomes cheaper and cheaper.

Most people look back over recent history and find it difficult to imagine that energy prices will ever go down - just look at gas prices today compared to a decade ago! But in reality, the past decade is an exception, caused by the rapid development of China and India just as we reached peak oil production. In the long term, the broad trend has been for energy costs to decline. Solar energy will ensure that that trend continues for decades to come.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2025 – In the United States, solar energy is cheaper than oil on average, on a per kilowatt-hour basis.
By 2035 – The global oil trade is less than 25% the size that it is in 2010 (approximately $2.1 trillion), adjusted for inflation.

The Economics of Happiness

The underlying assumption of modern economics has always been the notion that having more things makes people better off. Economists of all ideologies - from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman - have implicitly accepted this assumption, even while arguing with one another over the best way to optimize the production or distribution of things. In the last few years, an emerging field of economic theory, Happiness Economics, is finally challenging that assumption. By asking people in many different nations, economic conditions, and social groups if they are happy with their lives, economists are yielding some very interesting results.

Can money buy happiness? It turns out that it can, but only up to a point. In the United States, the poor are far less happy than everyone else, but there is no significant difference in self-reported happiness between the middle-class and the wealthy. Although the American economy is vastly larger today than it was immediately after World War II, self-reported happiness levels have remained stagnant. This pattern is observed on a global scale as well. The least happy places on earth are typically impoverished, war-torn nations, but the wealthiest nations are not necessarily any happier than middle-income nations. Once a nation is economically developed enough to meet the basic needs of its citizens, the relationship between national income and national happiness ceases to exist. (EDIT: Some researchers disagree, claiming that more income does indeed tend to result in more happiness.)

The happiest nation in the world is Costa Rica, which has a GDP per capita that is less than one-fourth that of the United States, and an average life expectancy that is roughly the same as the United States’. This pattern is widespread in Latin America. Although most Latin American nations are middle-income nations, the region as a whole is extremely happy. The opposite pattern manifests itself in Eastern Europe and Russia. These nations are upper-middle income, but report extremely low levels of subjective happiness.

So if money can’t buy happiness, what causes people to be happy or unhappy? Research indicates that married people are happier than single people, religious people are happier than non-religious people, and those with more leisure time are happier than workaholics. People who donate their time and money to charity are happier than those who don’t.

On the national level, there does not appear to be any relationship between political freedom and happiness, once income is controlled for. Some of the happiest nations – such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia – are hardly poster children for democracy and human rights. National happiness seems to be driven primarily by the same factors that drive individual happiness: Happy marriages, active religions, workers who have leisure time, a culture of charity, and enough income to avoid poverty.

In 1972, the King of Bhutan coined the term “Gross National Happiness” as his preferred metric for judging his nation’s progress. Although it was ridiculed at the time, tiny Bhutan is now one of the happiest nations on earth: an enclave of happiness nestled between much less happy nations like China, India, and Bangladesh. Many other nations are now investigating “Gross National Happiness” metrics of their own, including Brazil, Italy, and Canada. Maybe the economics of happiness is an idea whose time has finally come. Perhaps future economists can focus less on what maximizes our wealth, and more on what maximizes our well-being.

The Satisfaction with Life Index. Blue countries are the happiest, red countries are the least happy.

Black Swan Events: Nuclear War and Nuclear Terrorism

In my new Black Swan series of blog posts, I will be looking at a few of the potential surprises that history could have in store for us. Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines a Black Swan as an event that is very difficult to predict in advance, but radically changes the course of history. Some examples in the last 50 years include 9/11, the sudden collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, the AIDS pandemic, and the invention of the birth control pill. It would have been very difficult for a futurist to predict any of those events in advance based on trends, and yet they have had a very large impact on the world. A Black Swan Event could throw a wrench into predictions for the future, which tend to be based on analyzing trends rather than anticipating surprises.

All of the predictions I have made about the future of technology, especially those in the more distant future, should have the following disclaimer: “Provided that we do not destroy ourselves.” Today I’ll be examining a Black Swan event that has been hanging over humanity like a Sword of Damocles for 65 years. A nuclear war has been widely viewed as the ultimate catastrophe. Very few things could set back the progress we have made in improving the quality of life in the past two centuries more than a nuclear war could. Where is the greatest threat of a nuclear war, and where is the greatest potential for destruction? Could a sovereign nation launch a nuclear first-strike against its foes, or are nuclear-armed terrorists the greater threat?

Let’s first examine the potential sources of an international nuclear war. While less likely than a nuclear terrorist attack, it has far more destructive capability. I think there are three main global flash points to consider: India-Pakistan, North Korea-United States, and Israel-Iran.

As with any Black Swan Events, we need to evaluate scenarios based upon both their likelihood and their destructive potential. The India-Pakistan flash point is very high on both measures, making it of supreme importance. This region has the greatest potential for an international nuclear war in my opinion. The two foes have 60-80 nuclear weapons each, and neither seems to have many qualms about nuclear brinkmanship. The extreme population density in this part of the world means that even a single nuclear volley could have enormous destructive potential. Despite (or perhaps because of) the instability of the Pakistani government, the two nations remain as suspicious of each other as ever.

North Korea is another source of a potential nuclear war. The nation makes a habit of antagonizing nearly every other country in the world, projecting an irrational image, and seems to perpetually be on the verge of either a power transfer or total collapse. In my opinion, the greater danger is an accidental nuclear launch against South Korea or Japan, rather than a directive from North Korea’s leadership. Little is known about North Korea’s nuclear weaponry, but it is unlikely that such an impoverished nation has adequate safeguards in place to prevent a Dr. Strangelove-style strike ordered by a rogue commander. If a North Korean weapon was used on South Korea or Japan, the United States would almost certainly respond with nuclear force of its own.

Another potential source of international conflict is between Israel and Iran. If Iran eventually gains nuclear weapons (as I think it will), either Iran or Israel may be tempted to strike the other first to solidify its position as the preeminent nuclear power in the Middle East. However, in my opinion conflict is unlikely, because neither Israel nor Iran would truly gain much from a nuclear exchange. It is far more likely that the two nations would come to an uneasy truce than fight a nuclear war.

But the greater danger comes from nuclear terrorism, rather than nuclear war. While far less destructive, it is also far more likely. Warren Buffett stated in 2002 that he believed an eventual nuclear attack on US soil was a “virtual certainty.” While I am not quite that pessimistic, it is hardly unthinkable.

Where could terrorists obtain nuclear weapons? Three nuclear powers – Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea – have had difficulty maintaining control of their stockpile, thus allowing the possibility of a nuclear black market. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the nuclear material was spread amongst four nations (Russia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and Belarus). A small amount of it has never been accounted for. It may still be changing hands on the black market. North Korea and Pakistan pose even greater threats. North Korea may be on the verge of total state collapse. If the nation collapses and the neighboring powers do not take immediate action to secure its nuclear supplies, it is plausible that terrorists could eventually gain access to this material. The Pakistani government is increasingly unstable, and many elements of the military are sympathetic to terrorist groups. Many parts of the nation are not controlled by the central government. Furthermore, Pakistani nuclear officials under A.Q. Khan have a history of selling nuclear material on the black market.

While the end of the Cold War greatly reduced the threat of a nuclear conflict, the trend has now reversed as nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, especially in unstable regimes. The use of nuclear weapons is becoming more likely with each passing year. While I doubt that any terrorist groups have access to nuclear weapons yet, I think the day is coming in the near future unless the world takes immediate action to reverse the trend.

BLACK SWAN EVENTS:
A nuclear weapon is detonated in a major world city by 2030 – Probability: 50%
A nuclear war (defined as a nuclear attack and counterattack) occurs by 2030 – Probability: 30%

Black Swans

When predictions about the future are incorrect, it is often because the predictor assumed that history wouldn’t provide us with any surprises, which it almost invariably does. Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to these events as black swans. It is extremely difficult to predict them in advance, but they have a drastic impact on world history. Examples include 9/11, the AIDS pandemic, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the invention of nuclear weapons, the stock market crash of 1929, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, or the outbreak of World War I.

You may notice that most of the events on this list are widely considered to be disasters. As Warren Buffett has said, “Surprises are nearly always bad.” However, this isn’t universally true. There are, on rare occasions, examples of positive black swan events.

For example, in 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which predicted a nightmarish future of overpopulation and mass famine. Ehrlich looked at the global population trends from recent decades and saw that people were reproducing at an alarmingly fast rate. Yet within just a few years of the book’s publication, global birth rates began to decline and the global food supply increased exponentially. Ehrlich completely missed two very important “positive” black swans: The widespread adoption of the birth control pill and the Green Revolution in India.

The purpose of thinking about potential black swan events is to plan for events that are individually unlikely to occur, but would have a profound impact on the world if they do. I’ve thought of a few black swan events to think about for the next decade:

• A nuclear war between India and Pakistan
• The democratization or fragmentation of China
• Ecological collapse, followed or preceded by abrupt climate change
• Bioterror or bioerror releases a manmade super-plague
• The invention of effective anti-aging medicine offers indefinite lifespans
• The assassination of a major world leader
• An especially nasty strain of avian or swine flu results in a global pandemic
• An American state votes to secede from the union
• A global financial collapse

Depressing, huh? I tend to agree with Buffett that surprises tend to be bad (with some exceptions). Positive events tend to be much more incremental and predictable than negative events. You may believe the events on my list are all unlikely to occur in the next decade, as I do, but that’s the whole point. We must anticipate unlikely events and make contingency plans in case they occur. Life's surprises can be just as important as its long-term trends.

What do you think are some other black swan events that could conceivably occur in the next decade?

Climate Change Solutions and Non-Solutions

The climate change debate in the United States seems to perpetually focus on the wrong questions. Some deny that climate change even exists, while others claim climate change may reach a “tipping point” which would permanently cause a drastic shift in the earth’s climate. The economic aspects of the debate are usually drowned out entirely, but they are important to consider when formulating public policy. How much will it cost to fight climate change? Will our efforts to combat climate change actually be effective? And would it be better to simply wait a few years for better technology?

Climate change is, of course, a real danger to our planet, but our ability to reduce our impact at the present time is very limited. First, there is the economic problem. Even if the developed world unilaterally limited its carbon emissions, the developing world almost certainly would not follow suit, thus negating any carbon reductions in the West. From the perspective of developing nations, the economic imperatives of developing as quickly as possible simply outweigh the environmental risks of global warming. China and India have successfully lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty through economic development; it is highly unlikely that they will be willing to acquiesce to Western demands to limit their carbon emissions (and thus limit their economic growth). With such a strong economic incentive to continue polluting, finding the political will to limit emissions will be almost impossible for these nations.

Second, there is the technological problem. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 70 years. If the entire world suddenly reverted to the amount of carbon emissions they produced in 1990, the net impact on our climate would be almost negligible by the end of the 21st century. Programs like cap-and-trade are doomed to failure, due to both the political difficulty of implementing them and their lack of effectiveness at actually halting climate change. Therefore, any feasible solution must come from technology, not politics.

We need not accept the punishment Mother Nature will dole out for our meddling with the environment. On the contrary, I am optimistic about technological solutions on the horizon. Solar energy is following a Moore’s Law-like trajectory, with the cost falling by half every 2-3 years. Within 10 to 15 years, solar energy will be cheaper than oil. Switching from fossil fuels to clean energy will be the single biggest way to end our carbon pollution.

Additionally, many geoengineering solutions have been proposed to scrub the existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One of the most feasible ideas is called iron fertilization, in which we would seed the oceans with small flakes of iron to encourage plankton to grow, which would in turn “eat” carbon dioxide. Geoengineering solutions like this could be implemented today, and are very cheap. However, they carry environmental dangers of their own, and it remains to be seen if the good would outweigh the bad. Environmental scientists are studying the side effects of these solutions, and it should be clearer within a few years if the consequences of these solutions will be acceptable.

In the very near future, it is likely that we will have some cost-effective, feasible solutions for effectively limiting our carbon pollution, without the economic downsides of cap-and-trade or international treaties. However, they are not available quite yet, and we should not pretend that they are by wasting money on anti-global warming initiatives instead of spending the money on something that can actually help the world today. While I realize this suggestion does not fulfill our emotional need to pretend that we are doing something to solve the problem, doing nothing is the only rational course of action...for now.